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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25761991">Midnight</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopIWantToTalkAboutCheese/pseuds/StopIWantToTalkAboutCheese'>StopIWantToTalkAboutCheese</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>inspired by TUA season 2 [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Body Dysphoria, Brotherly Bonding, Luther Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:21:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,268</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25761991</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopIWantToTalkAboutCheese/pseuds/StopIWantToTalkAboutCheese</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>During a quiet night after escaping from the Sparrow Academy, Five and Luthor talk.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Number Five | The Boy &amp; Luther Hargreeves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>inspired by TUA season 2 [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860775</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>112</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Midnight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The scene where Luther rips his shirt off to yell at his dad was probably one of the funniest parts of this season for me, and really capped off the sheer awkwardness of that scene, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that poor Luther must experience some extreme dysmorphia on a daily basis. If <i>I</i> were literally part monkey, I probably wouldn’t handle it as well as he does in the show. That sort of extended to Five probably being uncomfortable in his body as well, and thus, this was born.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was a beautiful summer day, and Luther was smiling.</p><p>He, his siblings, Pogo, Mom, and Dad were all together, under Dad’s favorite tree in the yard. </p><p>Klaus was telling a joke, and they were all laughing. Beside Klaus, a ghostly form of– a soldier?– flickered. Allison was smiling, and she had Claire in her lap and Raymond at her side. Ben was cross-legged next to Allison, whispering something to Vanya, who was shaking with laughter. As Luther watched, Vanya met his eyes, and for a split second, her brown eyes glowed white, but Luther wasn’t afraid. Vanya was holding someone’s hand– Sissy, the woman at the farm, and she had the boy with her. Diego was sitting across from Allison, making faces at Claire playfully, and Claire was eating it up. Even Five was there, smiling in the way Luther hadn’t seen since they were actually thirteen.</p><p>And Dad was smiling at all of them. He was proud. He loved them. It made Luther want to jump up and shout <i>“I was right! Dad does love us! He just wants us to succeed, that’s why he was so hard on us! I should have known!”</i></p><p>As he watched his family get along, maybe for the first time, Luther felt happiness welling up in his chest. He looked down to hide the grin that was threatening to become weirdly big.</p><p>Shock suddenly overtook the joy, splashing down on Luther like ice-cold water. The joyous noises of his family faded out into white noise.</p><p>Shakily, he put a hand to his sternum. Slowly, with his other hand, he lifted his shirt.</p><p>Pale skin greeted him, with a lean, mostly-hairless stomach. Stunned, Luther stared at it, and lifted his arm to stare at it. </p><p>His <i>skinny, human</i> arm.</p><p>He was himself again. Before the accident.</p><p>Luther’s body was his again.</p><p>His skin was smooth, not rough and hairy.</p><p>His head was just the right size for his body, his hands were dexterous and hairless, save for a few thin ones here or there, his ankles were pale and pink and thin and <i>human</i>, his shoulders weren’t too big for door frames and neither was his height, and best of all, Luther could <i>move</i>. He could move and twist and stretch and not feel a horrible, scraping sense of <i>wrong wrong wrong</i> that made him want to claw his own skin off. Euphoria flooded through him, and he could feel tears beginning to build in his eyes.</p><p>Ben smiled at him. “Hey, Luther,” he said. “You all right?”</p><p>“Y–yeah,” Luther stammered. “I just… I thought…”</p><p>He thought what? Luther couldn’t remember. Why had he been so surprised to see his own body? It was his, right?</p><p>Right?</p><p>There was a flash of pain, radiating out from his chest, and Luther winced. What–</p><p>His father turned to him, and smiled, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. “Number One!” he said, “My last loyal son. You must go to the moon now, and send me samples. It is imperative that you do this, Number One, do you understand?”</p><p>“The moon?” Luther said, bewildered. “What does the–”</p><p>“Go now!” his father said, and waved a hand. Luther was knocked backwards, and found himself tumbling through a starry void.</p><p>Everything, the grass, the sky, the tree, Dad, Mom, Pogo, his siblings, everyone faded away and Luther was left on a desolate gray plain, moon dust curled in fingers that did not belong to him, completely alone.</p>
<hr/><p>Luther jerked awake, breathing hard.</p><p>His back rubbed against the scratchy blanket and he winced, feeling the hairs and the rough skin.</p><p>He had been dreaming.</p><p>Of course he had.</p><p>Dad didn’t love him, Ben was dead, and Luther was trapped in a body that he hated.</p><p>At least he wasn’t actually on the moon anymore.</p><p>Trying to redirect his thoughts, Luther blinked around at the motel room they had escaped to after fleeing the mansion. Realizing very quickly that none of them had much money on them, thanks to the whirlwind of their last day in Dallas, they had bought it for the night by pawning Allison’s “vintage sixties heels” and Klaus’s “original cult leader necklace”, supposedly passed down to him by the mysterious sixties cult leader who was wanted for killing JFK and then never turned up again.</p><p>It turned out that neither brought in much money, and now the six of them were sleeping in the rattiest, cheapest motel Luther’s ever stepped foot in, including the ones where Mr. Ruby had visited clients in.</p><p>Vanya, Allison, and Klaus were squished together on the single queen bed, Diego and Five were sharing the pull-out couch, and Luther had commandeered the stack of moth-eaten blankets in the closet to make a makeshift cot for himself on the floor. </p><p>Taking a deep breath to center himself, Luther calmed himself by counting the sleeping heads of his siblings.</p><p>Allison, Vanya, Klaus, Diego– hold on. Luther blinked and did another head count. One, two, three, four–</p><p>Where was Five?</p><p>Luther’s mind went into overdrive. Five could be anywhere. He could have gone back to the academy. He could have gone back to the sixties to try to stop them from messing up so much, without Luther as a spotter this time, and making everything worse. He could have gone to the future to make sure they didn’t cause the apocalypse again. He could have gone to goddamn Japan in 2040 or to Australia in the eighteen hundreds and Luther would have no way of knowing.</p><p>Five, as it turned out, was in the unoccupied room next door.</p><p>Naturally.</p><p>After hearing a curse through the thin motel walls, and spending a few seconds jimmying the lock– Mr. Ruby had taught him a lot– Luther quietly opened the door.</p><p>Five was inside, kneeling in his schoolboy shorts and scrawling equations on the wall. Luther was briefly grateful that he’d seemed to have enough foresight to use chalk instead of pen. Not that it would have mattered much anyways, the motel they’d managed to crash in was already crusty and grimy. But still, he was writing on the walls, which probably broke more than a few societal conventions.</p><p>“I don’t think you should be doing that,” Luther said, and felt a twinge of annoyance when Five did not jump, only turning to give him a poisonous look. </p><p>“You need to work on your stealth,” Five told him acerbically. “I’ve been listening to you galumphing around for the past ten minutes.”</p><p>Luther shrugged, ignoring the barb. He had never been all that stealthy, not even… before. “What are you doing, anyways?” he asked as Five scribbled more numbers on the wall.</p><p>“Well, Luther, right now, I am trying to figure out how we managed to screw up so badly in 1963 that we now have to deal with the goddamn <i>Sparrow Academy</i>, and more importantly, how we can <i>fix it</i>.” Five offered him a bitingly sarcastic smile. “Does that clear it up for you, or do I have to use smaller words?”</p><p>Luther rolled his eyes. “Nope, I got it the first time. I <i>meant</i>, what are you doing <i>awake?</i> It’s the middle of the night.”</p><p>Five hesitated a beat. “Couldn’t sleep. Too much to do.” He set down his chalk for a second and blinked out of existence. </p><p>Luther automatically glanced around, waiting for his brother to reappear somewhere else in the room, but Five was nowhere to be found. Luther sighed. He hated it when Five did this– vanishing to God-knew-where to get out of a conversation. He did it when they were kids, and now he did it when they were adults.</p><p>“Little prick,” he muttered, and tipped his head back to stare up at the ceiling. He was pretty sure there was a patch of black mold growing in the corner where this room and their room met. Well, that was unsettling. He would have to let the others know.</p><p>Just as Luther was about to head back to bed, Five reappeared in front of the crusty old cabinets, holding a bag of marshmallows, a jar of peanut butter, and a loaf of bread. He started to make himself a sandwich as Luther watched.</p><p>“You couldn’t have picked up some fruit, too?” he asked, a little helplessly, as Five ripped open the marshmallow packaging.</p><p>“No,” Five snapped. He threw himself onto the queen bed with the ingredients and started angrily making himself a sandwich with a switchblade.</p><p>Slowly, Luther sat down beside him. “I had a dream,” he offered.</p><p>Five didn’t look up. “Nightmare?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>That caught his brother’s attention, and Five set down the peanut butter-y knife to look at him weirdly. “Then why are you here?”</p><p>Luther shrugged. “I was looking for you.”</p><p>Five rolled his eyes and continued slathering on the peanut butter. Luther stayed silent as he packed Jet-Puffed mini-marshmallows onto every available surface of the peanut butter, pressing them in firmly. He stayed silent as Five blinked over to the wall to scribble something down before returning to his half-made sandwich, and continued squishing in marshmallows until physics literally wouldn’t allow him to put on more, and then he added a few extra, just in case.</p><p>Five took a bite of his disgusting sandwich and let out a hum of contentment, staring hard at the chalk equations on the wall. Finally, he muttered, “What did you dream about?”</p><p>Luther sighed. “Just… us. Our siblings, Mom, Dad, Pogo. Us being happy. You know, Mom and Dad and Pogo were alive, and Vanya could use her powers, and Ben was alive, and Klaus wasn’t high. And I–” he cut himself off.</p><p>“You?” Five said. “You what?”</p><p>Luther shrugged. “I looked like me again.”</p><p>Five stared at him. Luther hunched his shoulders and looked at his fingers. For a long time, he hadn’t even seen them as <i>his</i>. Luther had seen his old body exactly one time since the accident, and seeing the headless, pale corpse had made him throw up, but the sensation of his new skin scraping across the tiled floor had made him throw up even more, and the first time he took a shower had been <i>agony</i> as he tried to just get in and get out without touching the horrible animal body that didn’t belong to him–</p><p>“I know, it’s dumb,” he said, more to break off his train of thought than to reassure Five. “Dad only made me look like this–” he gestured to his torso, “to save my life. I get it. I just…”</p><p>“Sometimes you look in a mirror and you don’t recognize yourself,” Five said softly.</p><p>“...Yeah.” Luther said. “Do, uh…” he hesitated, looking down at Five’s tiny slumped form, “do you get that, too?”</p><p>“Duh,” Five said. “I’ve only been this way for a couple weeks. It’s called dysphoria.”</p><p>“Oh. It’s not fun.”</p><p>“No, it’s not.” Five held out his hands and looked at them pensively. “These used to have liver spots on them. And they were all wrinkled. I couldn’t stand up without my joints popping. My hair was white. I was an old man. And now, when I walk by a mirror, I don’t even realize I’m looking at me. Everyone wants to be young again. But people look at me, and they see a kid. And I'm not.” He shrugged. “It sucks.”</p><p>“I know you never saw me, uh, before,” Luther said. “But I used to be shorter. Thinner. Less– hairy.” <i>Human</i>, he thought, but didn’t say.</p><p>Five nodded. “I saw a picture in Vanya’s book.”</p><p>“Oh,” Luther said. He had never bothered to look at the photos Vanya had picked of them for her book. “Okay.”</p><p>“I guess you saw me, too. The real me. The old-man me.”</p><p>“...Yeah.”</p><p>“Can’t change the past,” Five said softly. “Not for this.”</p><p>Luther snorted. “Just once, I wish it would work out in our favor.”</p><p>“We’re the Umbrella Academy,” Five said. “Nothing ever goes in our favor.” He yawned, long and loud.</p><p>“You really should get some sleep,” Luther said, nudging Five. “Aren’t old men supposed to be tired all the time?”</p><p>Five snorted. “Listen, you young whippersnapper, you oughta show some respect for your elders.” He sobered. “I’ll sleep later. I just have to finish these equations.”</p><p>Luther bit his lip. No doubt the motel staff would kick them out if they found the chalk equations all over the wall, so he had half a mind to shut Five down. Of course, Five was a lot more stubborn than Luther was, so if he wanted to, Five might win in a fight.</p><p>But, well, if the vandalism wasn’t linked to him or Five in the morning, then surely they could get away with it. Five could teleport them out of there, or rewind time if they got caught. Surely it would be fine.</p><p>“Okay,” Luther said. “But I’m staying with you. I’m probably not going to get any more sleep tonight, anyways.”</p><p>Five rolled his eyes. “Be my guest.”</p><p>He stuffed the rest of the sandwich into his mouth and returned to the board. Luther lay back on the bed and closed his eyes, listening to the scraping of chalk on the board and the grumblings of his older brother. </p><p>It was midnight, and Luther’s body was still wrong, and he was farther away from his home than he’d ever been in his life, separated not by distance but by time and the dimensions of space themselves. But his brother was here with him, and his siblings were asleep just in the other room.</p><p>He smiled.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>What did you think?</p></blockquote></div></div>
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